Appeal to the Greek government for the abolition of Article 19 of
the Citizenship Code and other discriminations

Press Release, 10 December 1997

The human rights organizations signing this text, on the occasion of
today's International Day of Human Rights, appeal to the Greek
government to:

1. Abolish Article 19 of the Greek Citizenship Code, which is a
flagrant violation of the constitutional principle of equality before
the law, by giving the administration the discretion to arbitrarily
revoke the citizenship of only “non-ethnic ( allogenous)”
Greek citizens when they settle abroad with no intent to return, an
article that was recently characterized by Foreign Minister Thodoros
Pangalos “a clause that violates human rights.”

2. Grant to the stateless (former Greek citizens who, following an
irregular application of Article 19, lost the Greek citizenship though
they have been living permanently in Greece) all rights resulting from
the UN 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons
(ratified by Greece with Law 139 of 25/25—8-1975 but never
applied to this date in our country ), starting with the granting of
identity documents (according to article 27 of the Convention) or/and
travel documents (according to article 28), so that these persons can
at long last go to school, have social security and healthcare,
receive pensions, have work permits, etc. instead of being almost
“human ghosts.”

3. Abolish all administrative circulars and provisions on the
restricted zone in Thrace, which, contrary to government declarations,
remains in force, with the exception of the abolition of the control
of the entrance and exit from it only for Greek citizens, as the local
police authorities sincerely assert..

The appeal is also signed by the three minority deputies Birol
Akifoglou (ND), Galip Galip (PASOK), and Moustafa Moustafa (Coalition)
and the political parties Coalition (Synaspismos), OAKKE and Rainbow.

The appeal is available in the web:
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/english/pressrelease/10-12-1997.html/

Living in limbo: Campaign to stop ‘ghost citizen’
law

Athens News, 11 December 1997

Rights activists demand end to law which makes Muslims stateless

HUMAN rights campaigners yesterday called on the government to scrap a
citizenship law which they say is used to oppress Greece's Muslim
minority and which has left thousands of people stateless and stranded
without their basic rights.

The campaigners and representatives of the 120,000-strong minority
issued the plea in Athens on World Human Rights Day. They highlighted
the plight of Muslims stripped of their citizenship and thus deprived
of their right to travel, education, free healthcare and almost
everything else.

Aysel Zeibek is 20 and has been a “ghost citizen” for 13
years. Her entire family, from the village of Echinos near the
Bulgarian border, had their passports and ID cards confiscated after
going on a trip to Istanbul. “I want to get married but I
cannot,” the slightly built Zeibek told the news
conference. “I can remember when I was seven. I couldn’t
really understand what was going on…They called my mother down
to the police station and she came back crying.” She added:
“It's like having been in jail for 13 years. I can’t
get a degree. I can’t travel. I have absolutely no rights. My
father had to have a heart operation but he wasn’t
insured…I want my passport and ID card back.”

Zeibek lost her citizenship under the now-infamous Article 19 of
Greece's Citizenship Act first voted into the law in 1954 and
which states that citizens of “foreign origin” can be
deprived of their Greek nationality if they leave the country with the
intention of settling abroad.

Panayote Dimitras, head of Greece's branch of the Helsinki Human
Rights Monitor, said at least 7,000 people had been made stateless
since the law was passed, including about 50 new cases this year. Over
half the Muslim minority in Thrace is considered to be ethnic
Turkish. And about 500 families living in the area are believed to be
living in limbo after losing their identification papers.

The central problem of the article is that even a brief trip abroad
can be taken as an intention to leave the country, while family
dependants often suffer the same fate as those who are punished by the
state. Campaigners also say it is inherently unjust. “We have a
contradiction here. On the one hand, the state says there are no
ethnic but only religious minorities. But on the other, people are
being legally termed as being of foreign descent; which one is
it?,” queried Pavlos Athanasopoulos, human rights officer at the
Left Coalition, the only party officially represented at the news
conference.

Lawyers representing the stateless charged that, apart from the
citizenship law, a campaign of discrimination was being waged against
the minority. They cited a secret directive signed in the Eighties by
the socialist ex-deputy foreign minister, Yiannis Kapsis, which
instructed authorities to process applications (business licences,
building permissions etc) at the rate of 19 Orthodox applications for
every Muslim one. The existence of the directive was only made public
in 1989, when it was scrapped.

Yesterday's speakers charged that Article 19 was being used by the
government to drive ethnic Turks out of the region. Each
representative had his own case of injustice to report: The Muslim boy
who was told of his loss of citizenship while serving his national
service, or the elderly divorced woman also made stateless because the
authorities had failed to notice that she had ended her
marriage. Since 1991, foreign ministry decisions to strip citizens of
their citizenship are not made public, and the Muslims in question
only find out about their fate.

“I am tired of seeing this problem, of people losing their
citizenship and being scared to travel,” said Galip Galip, a
Muslim Pasok MP. “This is exposing [Greece] to the rest of the
world.”